Amazon Is Vulnerable This Black Friday

Amazon has been dominating holiday shopping—and the holiday shopping conversation—for years. But this year might be different.

Engagement Labs has analyzed pre-Black Friday online and offline consumer conversations using our TotalSocial® data & analytics platform. We find that while Amazon still has the overall #1 rank, its margin of victory has dropped sharply versus more traditional retailers like Old Navy.

This is important because consumer conversation drives a significant portion of sales – 19 percent, on average, according to a 2017 landmark market-mix-modeling study. This represents between $7 and $10 trillion in sales each year. Face-to-face and other private forms of conversations drive more than half of this impact, while social media is responsible for slightly less.

The good news for retailers is that there are many opportunities to drive consumer conversations about their brand, despite Amazon’s strength, as we reported in our report earlier this year, Five Ways to Beat Amazon.

Our data also shows that JCPenney has the opposite situation from Amazon—ranked very low, but up from a year ago, online and offline. They could do better than expected this Black Friday.

Meanwhile, Macy’s is doing well with OFFLINEconversations and recommendations—ranked high, and higher than a year ago. And Old Navy is doing well with its ONLINE conversations—generating social media engagement at a much higher level than a year ago.

JCPenney, Old Navy and Macy’s are just three of the retailers faring well against Amazon.

To learn more about how these brands and other retailers, including Costco, Nike and Lowe’s – are evoking new strategies to compete in today’s retail landscape, download our new eBook: 5 Ways to Beat Amazon.